May 30, 2008

NEWSgrist pal Daryl Wein's feature length documentary SEX POSITIVE, about Richard Berkowitz and the
invention of safe sex, will be playing in NYC next weekend on the big
screen if you want to check it out! It's part of the New Festival:

Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany
871 United Nations Plaza
New York, NY 10017
English

Free Admission.

212-439-8700

For Show/Tell 09 the Goethe-Institut
New York presents a film screening, book launch and talk between
experimental theater director David Levine and art critic Gregory Volk.

Levine's "Bauerntheater" ("Farmer's Theater"), combines elements of
durational performance, land art, and theater. In March, 2007, Levine
trained an American method actor to play a GDR Farmer in Heiner
Mueller's "Die Umsiedlerin" ("The Resettler"). After a month's
rehearsal, the actor was flown to Germany, given two acres of land and
a ton of potatoes, and asked to be "in character" for 10 hours a day
for a month. In asking "how completely can an actor become his
character?", Levine’s project raised questions concerning the
performance of cultural tradition, the representation of labor,
representation as labor, and the relationship of endurance and land art
to questions of authenticity. The project, funded by the German Federal
Cultural Foundation, was featured in the New York Times, Theater Heute,
Die Zeit, BOMB, and other publications.

For the Show/Tell event, Levine will screen a documentary video of the
project, featuring both rehearsal and performance footage.

The Bauerntheater catalogue is a guide to major threads of the project.
It includes essays by German theater critic Thomas Irmer, American
curator and art historian Maika Pollack, performance scholar Christel
Weiler, and social scientist Lars Fischer, as well as an introduction
by Daniel Wetzel of the performance-label Rimini Protokoll.